cue manic Gene Wilder voice: “my creation … LIVES!”

Last night I got the studio rewired (mostly — microphones and speakers work, I still have a bit more to do for everyone’s headphones, etc before we record). I’m thrilled that everything is working just as it was; nothing went *poof* and the resolder job I had to do works perfectly. w00t!

So last night, after a couple of minor false starts and everything was rewired (thanks to Matt for climbing behind the desk to plug in the preamps … several times as it turned out, heh), I arranged the bass traps and the gobos around the desk, and fired up some music.

WOW! What a sound. SO much more focused than it was before. The “sweet spot” — or, the listener’s position at the apex of the equilateral triangle with the speakers — sounds fantastic. The bass is MUCH tighter, less boomy, I can actually hear what’s going on in the low end. The imaging is much more precise, even with my low-end monitors. If it sounds this good with those, then I can’t wait to hook up my Dynaudio speakers from home in that room. Regardless, I have plenty of listening to do to familiarize myself with how this room sounds, but as I told Matt last night, we can DEFINITELY mix an album in this space now. Mission accomplished!

After we listened for a while, we moved the gobos out of the way and got out the microphones. We spent some time arranging them into the theoretically correct place as a starting point, put the bass traps and gobos back into place, fired up some headphones, and while Brent was playing I moved mics around one at a time.

I actually recorded a few minutes of drums…. wow! More low end, a tighter sound than ever. Much of this is, of course, due to the new drum heads, but several links in that particular chain have been upgraded lately. I also added another mic to the drums, so now I’m recording 6 channels of drums. So again, Mission Accomplished!

In our recent demos, the only part that sounded “right” in terms of final production was the bass. Now, I’m happy to say, the drums have a similar “finished” sound that should fit nicely into the mix. I can’t wait to record my acoustic guitars in this space now, not to mention vocals, not to mention mixing, not to mention mastering, not to mention selling thousands of CDs. :-)

Countdown to our basic tracks recording session: 12 days. Lots to do before then, cleaning, “vibe” detail (making the space comfortable and as aesthetically pleasing as possible, given the proliferation of “construction” scents in there at the moment…bleah), not to mention cleaning up preproduction for all our songs.